John Kasich sparkled in portions of Tuesday's GOP debate -- but he also complained and received boos.

The Ohio governor's performance featured two well-crafted answers to questions, but moderators asked him only those two -- leading Kasich to kvetch during a speaking gap of nearly an hour.

Kasich interrupted his way in -- more politely than in last month's CNBC event -- and finished with the second-longest airtime of the eight candidates in the main debate. He took on Donald Trump's deportation stance, prevailed in interruption skirmishes with Jeb Bush and finally found a way to deliver complete answers on foreign policy, balancing the federal budget and his more moderate position on immigration.

“From a practical policy matter, of course Kasich is correct in questioning whether we’d be able to deport 12 million people" and whether any politician would actually let a massive consumer bank fail, Kondik said. "But I think there’s a big group of Republican voters who just don’t want to hear that.

"Primaries are often about pandering, and Kasich has been the anti-pander candidate. On one hand you can salute him for that, but you’ve got to find out how to win the primaries."

When the boos were on Kasich's side ...

Kasich's interruptions -- and the truth-teller role he sought to play -- were featured in one of the night's most memorable exchanges. Early in the debate, Trump outlined the rationale for his insistence on building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and deporting people who are staying in the U.S. illegally.

“Think about the families. Think about the children,” Kasich said, after grabbing the floor. Then, to applause: “Come on, folks. We all know you can't pick them up and ship them across, back across the border. It's a silly argument. It is not an adult argument."

Trump again brought up the debunked claim he used against Kasich in last month’s debate: that Ohio enjoys a stronger economy because of fracking. Kasich said he wanted to defend himself, but Bush interjected -- after missing an opportunity to strike first with a moderate immigration stance -- and vowed to have Kasich's back.

“You’re not going to have my back; I have my back," Kasich said. He told Trump: “Little false little things, sir, they don't really work when it comes to the truth,” Kasich said.

Trump interrupted to say he'd founded a company worth billions of dollars. “I don’t have to hear from this man, believe me.”

And the Milwaukee crowd booed Trump.

“He’s picking on the wrong guy,” Kasich said of Trump after the debate.

... and when they weren't

Kasich's second attempt to debunk what he's called "crazy" stances didn't go over as well. The Ohio governor called out Sen. Ted Cruz out for insisting he'd allow Bank of America, along with its millions of everyday depositors, to fail rather than bail it out. You can't let hard-working people lose their savings, Kasich tried to say -- and did say, if you take the sum of his response.

But it didn't come out quite that way. Kasich articulated his stance, and then Cruz jumped back in.

"Why would you then bail out rich Wall Street banks, but not Main street, not Mom and Pop?" Cruz said.

"I wouldn't," Kasich responded. And, eventually: "I would not let the people who put their money in there all go down."

"So you would bail them out," Cruz interrupted.

"No, as an executive," Kasich said, "I would figure out how to separate those people who can afford it versus those people, or the hard-working folks who put those money in those institutions--"

And that's when the boos started.

“I don’t think there’s a single person on that stage who, if they were actually in the Oval Office, would abandon American families who, through no fault of their own, lost their life savings. And John Kasich was making that point," said Matt Borges, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, who traveled to Milwaukee to support Kasich. "When someone is taking the fight to one of the other candidates, some of the more vocal supporters of the candidates can let their opinions be known. But what the governor was once again doing was demonstrating that he was the adult on the stage.”

So Kasich used interruptions and exploited the debate format to grab a big chunk of airtime for the second-straight debate. Only Cruz spoke longer than Kasich's 11 minutes and 51 seconds, according to Politico. The Ohio governor seemed more comfortable Tuesday than in the GOP's other three debates, easily crafting more comprehensive answers that played to his strengths.

In response to complaints about the soundbite- and squabble-heavy early debates, Fox Business Network and Wall Street Journal moderators allowed more time to answer questions -- 90 seconds and then 60 seconds for follow-up questions.

So when Kasich was asked for specific plans for balancing the federal budget, he waxed eloquent for more than 90 seconds about making responsible tax-cut promises -- intimating that other GOP candidates have fallen short -- and even plugged his website.

Then, he received the crisp follow-up: "Did you want to name any specific steps, sir?"

But after his exchange on immigration, Kasich went nearly an hour without an answer.

At one point, moderators started to ask him a question. But a skirmish between Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, followed by interruptions from Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, resulted in the question's dismissal. Kasich fidgeted and grimaced through it all, finally registering a complaint that came dangerously close to a whine. “I hate to crash the party," Kasich said, "but what’s fair?”

Still, Kasich resurfaced later to regale viewers with a country-by-country list of foreign policy positions: arm Ukranians, institute a no-fly zone in Syria, back Jordan's king, use the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement to create possible alliances against China.

Despite the lull, and the boos, Kasich's assured budget and foreign-policy answers met his goals of showing his experience, said Bruce Berke, a Kasich ally in New Hampshire.

Evoking a Kasich quote played in political action committee commercials in New England, Berke said: